St. Paul Pioneer Press tech blog by Julio Ojeda-Zapata

Your Tech Weblog

St. Paul Pioneer Press tech blog by Julio Ojeda-Zapata

Your Tech Today: Create custom Stay.com travel guides

Digital travel-information service Stay.com works in an interesting and useful way: You create a customized digital guide via the site, with only the attractions that interest you.

Let’s say you are about to tour Minneapolis (which for me, as a St. Paul resident, sometimes qualifies as an exotic travel destination). The Minneapolis section of Stay.com is loaded with highlighted attractions, such as Loring Park and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, along with restaurants, bars, shopping destinations and more.

Click the ones you want and they’re added to your personalized planner. You can add customized locations via a map, too.

Then, off you go, with the Stay.com app loaded on your Apple iPhone or Android smartphone. Once you’re logged in (it is helpful to authenticate via Facebook on both your computer and mobile device), your customized locations are at your fingertips.

It’s possible, though a bit more awkward, to create a customized guide right on your phone.

You can also see customized Minneapolis guides created by others, see suggestions from other users, and keep track of friends’ check-ins.

Downloading and printing guides as PDF files is another option. You can even download data for an entire city for offline use. (I had trouble with downloads, which kept aborting; Stay.com on the phone strikes me as a somewhat buggy service.)

As the Stay.com name implies, you can also book hotels via the service.